Radeon problems with my new system

[Blithe]

Hi,

I've been a lurking at Anandtech Forums for years, but I've finally decided to register because this problem I encountered is killing me. I was thinking that since no one else can solve this issue, I'm sure the wonderful people here would have the likeliest chance of helping. Anyways, my system specs are listed below.

What happened was that I tried installing a AIW Radeon 9800 Pro into my system. At first, I can't even turn on the system once the molex connector was attached...the fans spun up and died in less than a second. However, once I disconnect the molex power connector, then the system would turn on, but he video card wouldn't work w/o power. So I returned it and exchanged it for another one. Same thing!

Afterwards, I swapped cards and placed a non-AIW in and it works perfectly. The AIW works with another system, but it just doesn't work on mine. I thought it was a PSU so I upped it to a 530W one, still nothing. However, when I used a weaker 330W one it turned on around 10% of the time. Can anyone help?

I have a feeling it might be a MB problem, but I've updated it many times and it still is the same thing. I've settled on the non-AIW, but it would be great if I can get it working so I can watch TV on my Apple HD monitor! The system is running great and is as fast as heck. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[SigmaOrionis]

Hi Blithe,

This problem has been talked about on other forums. People had different theories and workarounds.

One theory was that it has to do with the radeon AIW sending an instantaneous short to the power supply at boot up. This causes better power supplys to catch it and then there protection circuitry cuts power. This theory was backed up by a few people who went to lesser power supplies being able to boot with the connector attatched no problem. Whereas before when they were using there Antec Truepowers or Enermaxs they couldnt boot correctly.

Another theory was just that the earlier revisions of cards had incompatibilitys with certain motherboards. This was backed up by people upgrading there MBs and being able to boot correctly with the molex attached to the AIW.

It seems like switching the power supply or motherboard worked for most people. This doesnt sound like a very good workaroud. If I had to choose I would switch power supplies. Some of the people in the post had luck with the regular Antec Smartpowers and some people had luck with the 500w chieftec PSUs there was one person that bought a 400w PCpower and cooling and it fixed it for him.


Some people that didnt want to replace any hardware just rigged a switch on power line going to the cards molex connector. That way immediately after bootup they would apply power to the card and it would work fine.

Other people, and this sounds very scary and inconvient to me, would just plug the molex into the card immediately after bootup. This would also allow them to boot normally. I would think applying power to the card after it was live though sounds dangerous and I personally wouldnt do it.

I'm not sure which forum I read this in but it was like a 130 posts long. If i find the actual post I will link to it so you can read it for yourself. I'm going by memory trying to paraphrase it for you.

What I would do is try a few different power supplies and see if I could get one that worked correctly in your configuration.

Hope this helps and you get it working. Good luck.